The Colorado Kid (2005)

“A man doesn’t get to the age I was even then without getting his ass kicked a number of times by fools with a little authority.”

I didn't have much to say about this book when I reviewed it the first time, but my opinion had fallen a bit by the time I reviewed it again in 2019:

"It's tough to tell what the point of writing an unsolvable mystery is outside of a classroom exercise of some kind. King's at a point, both careerwise and talentwise, where he can write such a thing and get it published and even make it compelling. But why would he want to? And how could anyone tell if he succeeded or not? He famously derided Nicholson Baker's Vox as a meaningless fingernail paring, but what is this, then? I can only assume there's something here I'm missing."

Still fair, I feel, but as a result of this re-read, I’m going to bump this one up, from 63rd (of 65) to 46. I’ll get to why that is momentarily, but there it is up front. Lest we forget, though, this is not some King's Highway adjunct project, but another episode of:

Also, I’ll break from previous entries in the Hard Case Crime Chronicles and delve into
plot details and spoilers, below. 

2005
HCC-013-I

There'll definitely be at least one more of these (King's Later comes out in early 2021) but the Hard Case Crime Chronicles will be slowing down for the foreseeable future. Like From Novel to Film or Friday Night Film Noir or Twilight Zone Tuesday or any once-frequent-feature here at the Omnibus, the HCCC will join the Legion of Inactive Series. I don't really consider these series "closed" in that I exist in a permanent state of wanting to take up any old series and continue; hell, I'm still plotting storylines for fan-fic comics written with friends from the 80s, in some part of my brain. (True story.) So, same with Hard Case Crime Chronicles. I mean, I'm keeping the books. Which is actually part of how the project was a failure. 

I had two objectives: (1) to read the fifty-ish Hard Case Crime books on my shelf to (2) determine whether or not I was keeping them or donating them. I failed the first part by thirty-five books so was unable to determine the second part. On the other hand, I enjoyed myself, mostly. So hey. I'd not like to make a habit out of enjoying failure, but it's a victory of sorts (not the scoreboard - or electoral college - kind) when it happens. Because reading’s cool, Beavis.  

So let's jump in. First, the new cover. Great composition, but the girl needed some work. (The shoulders, the left leg: ugh.) This juxtaposition of idyllic seaside Maine with murder works well, and it’s the sort of thing that specifically holds anchor for King. As he mentions in the afterword, the islands off the coast of Maine like Monhegan or Cranberry fascinate him with their “contrasting yet oddly complimentary atmospheres of community and solitariness.” It’s a fascination that has minted mucho dinero for El Maestro Rey, and much readerly delight among his fans.

He’s also sketched out the Maine-r of the American species many times. He does here as lovingly as anywhere, although he burns off some of the good will he engenders by indulging a bit too much. He’s tried this sort of thing (two locals relaying a long quasi-mythological tale as interrupted and augmented by their folksy mannerisms, their unsurpassed empathy, and their wisdom) many times in other places, but I’d say the way he does it in The Colorado Kid is mostly a net-positive. Some of the broader strokes work better (“That in the winter the wind on the mainland side of the island was sometimes a terrible sound, almost the cry of a bereft woman, was a thing she did not know, and there was no reason to tell her” than others “Then they were all laughing. Stephanie * thought she loved those two old buzzards. She really did.”)

* Stephanie/ Stephen. Draw your own conclusions. At one point, the other two characters kid Steffi – “That’s pretty good. You should be a writer.” I do not suggest Steffi is a one-to-one avatar for the author (what Grant Morrison has called the “two-dimensional diving suit”) any more than Vince or (the other guy) is. But are the author’s characters / inner monologues cracking on him? i.e. is that what his characters are telling King, the faithful transcriber/ excavator of the characters in his stories? Yes. In other places in the book as well. 

A parable is delivered in the first chapter re: the monetary ecology of a closed island community and perceptions vs. reality that probably doubles as King’s statement on the Schrödinger’s Mystery aspect of The Colorado Kid itself. Vince answer’s Steffi’s question (“will (the waitress) know who put the money in her purse?”) “If she didn’t know, would that make it illegal tender?” They might as well have put a picture in after that chapter of everyone looking directly at the reader.

Speaking of the pictures, there are plenty new ones in the second printing. I didn't include them all below and can't provide specific credits since neither the publisher (Charles Ardai, in his intro) nor the author in his Afterword, nor anyone at the respective sites for the book (for shame!) or wiki, did, except to state that one or two of them are by Kate Kelton, the actress who played Jordan on Haven (allegedly based on TCK) and others are by Mark Edward Geyer, Paul Mann, and Mark Summers.

Paul Devane in foreground, whose father-in-law's cigarette habit provides an important clue. 

This looks more like a photo that was traced over, to me. (A problem with having more than one artist do the pictures is lack of consistency for character models. Steffi, Vince, and "Dave Bowie" (ugh) look differently each time they appear.

I assume this is the Colorado Kid's widow? Kinda vampy, eh?

I also don't recall Steffi wearing a mini-skirt and pumps. Then again, I don't recall her looking as shown on the original cover. I'm the kind of dumb animal who says "hey wow, legs!" either stupid way.

I like this one. Don't mind Herman up there, my desk gargoyle; he was helping hold the book open for me.

The Russian coin that does not exist in our world. (Is that President Chadbourne on the $5 bill? Does that look like Lincoln to you?) 

This is from the bit from the Joyland excerpt at the end. Who's this lady supposed to be? I suppose it's the Mom before her thank you tryst with our young hero. This picture makes it looks like she's some boardwalk floosie waiting for a thirteen year old boy, FWIW.

This reminds me of that scene near the beginning of Blue Velvet: "Yep. That's an ear all right."  

Let's chat about the mystery, shall we? I took note of a few things while reading:

- "Tea for the Tillerman" comes up more than once, in one of those flashes of inspiration from Steffi that seem rather conspicuously placed. She at first thinks it's Al Stewart, then remembers it's Cat Stevens. It's Cat Stevens in our world, but as other things suggest, this whole takes place in another.  The lyrics suggest tea for the tillerman and "steak for the son." Our mystery dead man does have a piece of improbable steak lodged in his throat. How or why, who knows? This is a tantalizing line of inquiry, but I can make nothing of it. 

-      "This has been a long time coming" or "Lidle's got it coming" are what the (unreliable drunk) tillerman hears from our possible-mystery-dead man as he crosses the sound. What does this mean? Zero clue. Who is Lidle? 

- The time difference between CO and ME is two hours, and the final sightings of Mystery Dead Man (Cogan) are 10:30 am CO time and 5:30 pm ME time. 

- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is referenced. Is this a clue? Is there anything in the plot which speaks to TCK? 

- The pack of cigarettes has only one missing. Twenty cigarettes come in a pack. Twenty minus one is FFS obviously the dude went Todash.

- No Starbucks in 1980, nor Blockbuster, yet both are mentioned. And there apparently is no such Russian coin as the one Cogan has, the Chervonetz. These are deliberate clues, so we must accept the idea that this is an alternate timeline/ dimension than the one we inhabit. Steffi and Vince make no mention of the incongruity of Starbucks/ Blockbuster, so they too inhabit one we do not. These are not minor things, I'd say. (Would it make the story/ mystery more compelling if they had? That is to say, if they were of our timeline, where these things are incongruities? I think so. Instead we're left with another mystery. Unless: the Colorado Kid is actually from our own future-present and somehow warped into the 1980-Maine of the titular story. That's what I lean to.) 

That brings me to my only real problem of TCK. Which isn't so much a problem with the book itself but with King's remarks about it. He originally suggested that there is a solution. Then he started saying, well, there only might be; "my solution," (he says) "is supernatural." This annoys me. Is King's solution only one of many solutions? It's one thing to say "hey some of my fans might not like my not solving this one" and another to be all "maybe there is one; maybe there isn't." You either included the clues needed to solve the mystery, or you didn't. 

And "supernatural" covers so much ground that it muddies the point of the perfectly readable but to-what-purpose what-ifs in which the novel engages. What's the point of eliminating the impossible to arrive at the improbable if "gone Todash" is ultimately the answer even though you need to go beyond the book to even get the clue? Does it undermine the whole point of living our lives in cogent defiance of the nightmare-fuel-of-unknowns that existentially envelop us all? To borrow from King's allusion at the beginning, it decreases the purchasing power of the legal tender in circulation. 

I said this is a story about telling stories, but really the plot is even simpler: it’s simply a story about the day Steffi joined the staff ("crossed over the river") of The Weekly Islander. Tea for the tillerman. All the relevant details to tell that story, to achieve that goal, are present in The Colorado Kid. As Vince says, life is 99% mystery and 1% conceptual re-framing to stay sane. Then again, this is drama, folks. I can’t see why it can’t be both a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves and how we use them to accept/ exclude and a puzzle box with a more traditionally satisfying conclusion: The Mystery of the Riddle’s Enigma plus Steffi solving it, even if she (or the reader) is unaware she's done so. 

Actually, I guess such a book would probably look something like The Outsider. King's the one who gets us into this mess by the Starbucks/Blockbuster thing. I think when it comes to whatever mysteries remain in King's works, we likely have gotten all the answers we're going to get. It's frustrating, but that's life.

Perhaps there's a lesson there.

"And on the mound the little boy who had been pitching held his glove up to one of the bright circles which hung in the sky just below the clouds, as if to touch that mystery, and bring it close, and open its heart, and know its story."

Herman is happy to have helped. 

Genesis in the 1980s

I made a Genesis playlist here if you want some soundtrack for the below.

I actually began a Genesis project over here at little ol' Dog Star Omnibus - the biggest little Omnibus in the Union, to paraphrase Rhode Island's old state slogan - last year or the year before. I sank a good amount of time into it but got sidetracked by something or other and never finished. But Political Beats recently wrapped up a fantastic seven hour overview of Genesis, and (as their overviews of bands I like usually do) it got me going through their discography again.

Here's a brief bio of me and Genesis:

- I don't know the first time I heard Phil Collins - in the 80s his hits were just part of the ether, even in West Deutschland, where I was for the first half of the decade, and where things popular in the States often took five or six months to make their way to us - but it was around 1985, I think, when I became aware of Miami Vice. That led to "In the Air Tonight" which led to No Jacket Required.

- My family moved back to the States in August '86, a couple of months after Invisible Touch came out Genesis released , one of the most popular (radio, sales, and video-wise) records of the decade. The title track was played everywhere, and constantly, as were all the other singles. "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," a harrowing song about a junkie in the throes of withdrawal, was even used for a Michelob commercial.

- Sometime over the next few years I started getting into prog rock, and everyone kept telling me to check out the band's 70s stuff. This led me to make several pilgrimages to Luke's Record Exchange in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, commemorated elsewhere in these pages. One time I walked out of there with Foxtrot, Nursery Crime, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. (For less than $10, probably). And I liked them so much that when I finally got a CD player one of the first CDs I ever purchased was Trick of the Tail. An album I love so much that I almost made this post a 1976 to 1986 deal, just so I could cover it.

None of these just-mentioned albums are on the docket for today, though. Genesis broke big at the end of the 70s thanks to the success of "Follow You, Follow Me". (Not a particular fave of mine.) What would the 80s hold? First up:

(1980)

I often use the word “brackish” to describe the trends, musical or otherwise, of the first or last years of any decade. The styles and trends of the previous decade mingle briefly with the new and form some unique mixture of sound before one era gives way to the next. On And Then There Were Three (1979) you can clearly hear the 80s-to-come style of the band on “Follow You, Follow Me,” but it sticks out like the proverbial sorest of thumbs among the other tracks, which sound so solidly 70s-Genesis-sounding. Duke, the band’s tenth (!!) album, bridges the two eras more gracefully, managing to sound like new wave prog rock or something close to it. 

The singles: “Duchess” The keys rock on this one. Is Tony Banks the most underrated rock keyboardist of all time? Among rock keyboardists certainly not. But among the general public is there even a rated rock keyboardist? I don’t know what the conventional wisdom is on the subject. Without a doubt and with no caveats, though, Tony Banks rocks. There’s a quote that follows him around about how most of his songs have seven chords too many. Perhaps so, but he’s also the earworm guy in the band. Well, they each have an uncanny gift for earworm, I think, perhaps Phil, Mike, and Tony share this distinction equally.

“Misunderstanding” is the album’s big hit. It’s not a fave. Both the main riff and the general mood and lyrics seem repetitive of Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain.” I can't be the only one who thinks this? But I love “Turn It On Again.”  I love when you hear a song a million times and eventually discover it’s about something completely different than what you thought. Genesis has a unique skill set for hiding complex, askew ideas in 80s-radio-friendly packages. Even better, though, is the secondary discovery that “Oh wow, that song really does sound like (that idea.)” Take “Turn It On Again,” a song which achieves even more tragic relevance in the social media age, about a man whose only relationships are with the flickering images on his TV screen, whose life is experienced only vicariously through them. The middle section with the odd time signature precisely approximates that disorientation of cable-flipping, searching for that “hit” of sublimated existence. 

Was “Man of Our Times” a single? (Answer: no.) I need to do a comprehensive overview of Mike’s solo stuff, I love everything he ever brought to the band. While we’re here, Phil’s “Please Don’t Ask” is his most personal song, written about the break-up of his first marriage, and it’s certainly memorable at that, but it’s Genesis (and Phil) at their Beach-Boys-iest. You can’t say that about too many of their tunes.

My favorite track is undoubtedly “Duke’s Travels.” That sucker is epic. The album is really called “The Story of Albert” (A quick summary is that Albert has a break up, and falls in love with a singing star on television while sitting at home alone.) It’s all there, emotionally and overture-wise, in that one instrumental. And “Duke’s End” is a great wrap-up/ roll-credits. 

Next:

(1981)

I mentioned up there that at least part of the “80s sound” is co-authored by Genesis. I’d love to truly map out what I consider the 80s sound (how many parts the Fairlight CMI? How many parts Eddie Van Halen? How many the Human League?) but what I meant by that is the gated reverb effect on Collins’ drums. Mic-ing the drums that way forced Tony to alter the way he played keyboards. It all leads inevitably to "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" and everything else on Invisible Touch. That is the eventual waterfall we hang-glide over, Moonraker-style, and you can see it ever so small in the distance when you listen to this album.

The title track was a bold choice for a single (although the radio version lops off the best part, which is all the weird stuff at the end) but an even odder choice for album opener, if you ask me. Great tune, though; there really aren’t any bad ones on this record. The two that I like least are the album’s best-known tracks (“No Reply at All” and “Man on the Corner.”) And I like those just fine, just not as much as the title track of “Me and Sarah Jane” or my two favorites: “Dodo/Lurker” (the keys are fierce as hell in that one) and “Keep It Dark.”

Here's Simon Collins covering it.

The albums’ most infamous track is probably “Who Dunnit”. I like it and its audacity, but it drives me a little crazy. I only learned from the Political Beats episodes that it’s basically a fart joke. Good for Genesis wrapping a fart joke in what could otherwise be a shop demonstration of the Prophet-5 synthesizer.

Those Political Beats guys pointed out something else interesting, as well. Abacab is as true a blend of new wave, prog rock, post-punk as any of the other albums often nominated for such (Songs for the Big Chair from Tears for Fears, Synchronicity by the Police, or even Moving Pictures by Rush). I might nominate Genesis (1983) myself, but both it and Abacab, certainly.

The band released its third live album next with:

(1982)

Very good live album. Their best? Probably. The later ones are hampered by We Can’t Dance-era stuff (spoiler alert: not a fan of We Can’t Dance; happily for me it came out in ’91 so I didn’t have to dive back into it for this here blog) and the earlier ones by poorer production. Maybe the Last Domino tour planned for 2021 will result in their definitive live album. It’d be a nice swan song for the band. 

All the songs here from the band’s most recent material is fine, but the real treats are the 70s-revisit stuff (“In the Cage” and “It/ Watcher of the Skies” especially) and the b-sides. Which are left off the CD but comprised the unmentioned fourth side of the title.

“Paperlate,” though, I hadn’t heard that in thirty-odd years. It was a short-lived joy to rediscover. That style of call-and-response with the horns doesn’t really land with me. Sing “Chick-fil-A, chick-fil-A” to the melody, though, and wham, instant jingle. 

Next:

(1983)

Let's do a song-by-song take on this one.

“Mama” A few years back I watched all seven seasons of Magnum, PI without even really meaning to. I was going to do a Top Ten post for it but never did (more here). One of the episodes that would’ve been on that list, though, was "Death and Taxes" which is basically a forty-odd minute music video for this song/ Miami Vice "homage". The lyrics apparently reference The Moon’s a Baboon, made into a film with David Niven. (Never saw it.)

Here’s an excerpt from an old Keyboard Magazine about the production of this song.

“The Linn LM-1 rhythm was programmed by Mike Rutherford, rather than drummer Collins. It was fed through a reverb unit and then into a Fender amplifier with a large amount of distortion. Tony Banks used a Synclavier, ARP Quadra, E-mu Emulator, and Sequential Circuits Prophet-10 in the recording. The Quadra's rhythmic pulses were triggered by the 16th note hi-hat pattern coming from the Linn drum machine. A low E drone was recorded on the Prophet-10 through most of the song. A koto, which happened to be in the studio one day, was sampled into the Emulator and used in the song because it was felt that no other sound worked in the section.”

I understand every third or fourth word of that. Sounds awesome, though.

“That’s All” What can you say? Craftmanship supreme. 

“Home By the Sea” Here’s another of those double-whammies I mention. I must’ve heard this a hundred times before I ever looked it up what it was about, and I only ever did so because I joked to a friend once that if I ever got a home by the sea it wouldn’t be the one from that Genesis song. I was only responding to the tortured mood of the song, not its lyrical content, which do happen to be about a haunted house. And that’s where the secondary realization kicks in, i.e. “wow, that song’s about a burglar who breaks into a haunted house and then the ghosts just sit him down (“Sit ow-owwwn-n-n!”) and tell him stories of who they used to be and how they came to be haunting there. And you know what? That’s exactly what it sounds like, now that I know that.” Remarkable.

“Second Home By the Sea” Because the first wasn’t enough! Absolutely not. An artsy sequel, like the sophisticated city cousin to the haunted country mouse of the previous. I’ll work on it.

“Illegal Alien” Okay, well, they can’t all be first round picks. This is a good-hearted silly song that is anachronistic and a little weird-sounding now. I’d say “offensive” but it’s practically banal these days to point out perfectly inoffensive things that are treated like Lord Haw Haw. It goes on way too long, mostly.

I never liked “Taking It All Too Hard” on previous listens but Old Man Bryan likes it just fine and kindly reminds you of the boundaries and border-hedge of his personal exteriors. 

“Just A Job To Do” Is this Genesis’ most overlooked big hit? As in people forget both that it exists or that Genesis did it? In all fairness, it’s easy for the casual listener to get Phil’s 80s work mixed up with Genesis’. Mike and the Mechanics don’t have that problem. (Nor Tony, I guess, if anyone even recognized them. Poor guy released four or five non-Genesis projects in the 80s that sold a total of four copies. I’m told, unreliably. I’ve heard none of them. That’ll change one of these days. I love Tony, don't send me hate mail.) Anyway this is a fun tune. I wouldn’t say Phil is underrated as a vocalist, but one particular aspect of his fronting Genesis – that of “selling” all of these different POVs, here an assassin with (see title) – may be. That’s a whole different skill set than just hitting the notes. 

(“I’m coming hard on you!” might have been re-thought as the bridge, but it was a simpler time. )

“Silver Rainbow” Some great (and weird keys) on this one. Apparently the silver rainbow is the zipper to a girl’s jeans. A trivial little tune, perhaps, but a great example of just how effortlessly these guys can construct a song. Is there a note wasted here? I think not. Despite the subject matter, it reminds me of a Wiggles tune. 

“It’s Gonna Get Better” Criticized on release as “cosmic Elgar” (as in Sir Edward William Elgar, the dude whose “Elegy” graces many a montage in film and television) it actually lifts a cello part from a different composer, Aram Khachaturian. A lovely song that has only grown on me over the years and dozens of listens. The ending goes for broke and succeeds. It points squarely to where the band will land next.

Before we get there, the b-sides for the singles on this one include “Nanimani” and “Submarine.” Both are great. The latter could be the theme of an entire film, actually. Not necessarily a navy (or delicatessen) film, just a nice slice of atmosphere. 

And finally:

(1986)

Here’s an album that was inescapable for a few pivotal years of my youth. (They’re all pivotal!) At the mall, on the radio, on MTV, in my bedroom, you name it. 

That song by song approach worked pretty well for Genesis; let’s do the same here.

“Invisible Touch” This and “Turbo Lover” by Judas Priest were my favorite songs ever in seventh grade. My friend Kevin’s joke at the time was “She seems to have an invisible tool shed!” Man that cracked me up. I sang it practically every time I heard it for a number of years. Now I wonder what the hell was so funny about it, but hey. 

“Tonight Tonight Tonight” One last time hitting this note, I promise: when I first learned it was about a junkie looking for a fix and not the band just looking for Michelob in a typical 80s nightscape, I had to marvel at how obvious it was, once you realize that. What a great vocal from Phil. Hard to believe this guy became a singer more or less accidentally.

“Land of Confusion” Great track. I remember when everyone went nuts for the metal remake. Not bad, I guess, but for me the remake just underscores how perfect the original is. Ditto for the metal remakes of “Blue Monday” and “Smooth Criminal” come to think of it. Remember when there was a metal remake of everything? And then a techno remake, and then a punk/hardcore remake? Simpler times, my friends, simpler times.

“In Too Deep” A placeholder for a certain type of 80s something-something, but not a song I enjoy.

“Anything She Does” Side Two opens up with this number, which always gives off a strangulation vibe to me. It’s not a great track, perhaps, but it makes 100% of my Genesis mixes, so there’s that. Seems essential for an inessential Genesis track.

“Domino” Essential any way you cut it. More awesome vocals from Phil. That “Nothing you can do when you’re the next in line” section through the end is as good as it gets. 

“Throwing It All Away” Speaking of as good as it gets. This riff is dynamite. The whole song is dynamite. I used to really love the video back in the day then didn’t think of the song for like twenty years, then one day heard it on some 80s hour lunch break and now I’d say I listen to it at least once a week. (Same thing happened with Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face” while we’re here.)  

“The Brazilian” I had no real context for Genesis as a prog rock band when I first got this album. That came later. But from the first this song had a pull on my imagination. What was going on here? How did they get the synthesizer to make that wind whoosh out of the speakers sound? What is this, keys or drums? (It’s both.) Just fantastic. On a short list of cool rock keyboard songs. (Impromptu, incomplete version of such a list: “The Brazilian,” “Keep It Dark,” the live “Aquatarkus” by ELP from In Concert, “Joy” by Apollo 18, “Catherine of Aragon” and “Merlin the Magician” by Rick Wakeman, and “Love Theme from Boat Chips (total remix).” 

B-sides: "Do the Neurotic," now we're talking. What a cool solo. In the same way "Submarine" could be chopped up and redistributed to be the soundtrack of an entire film, this one could about cover a single episode of 80s TV. (I guess Tom Selleck had the same idea for "Mama" and that "Death and Taxes" episode of Magnum, eh?) I love the ending.

"Feeding the Fire" - great vocal, not the greatest song. Still, cool enough. And "I'd Rather Be You." I like this one. Did the Cure rip this off with "Why Can't I Be You?" Not really, I guess, but there's a similarity. To David Lee Roth's "Perfect Timing," as well. 

~

Genesis took the rest of the 80s off as a band while Phil and Tony put out more solo records, and Mike and the Mechanics hit it big (again) with The Living Years. That, then, brings us to the end of our overview. Thanks for joining me!